ResCon1

Obesity Is a Much More Dangerous Public Health Problem Than the Coronavirus

Obesity Is a Much More Dangerous Public Health Problem Than the Coronavirus

By John R Guardiano on March 10, 2020

The coronavirus is dominating the headlines. This is understandable, given that it is a new and potentially fatal virus that we don’t well understand, and for which there is not yet a vaccine.

Still, as Anthony S. Fauci, M.D, acknowledges, the risks of serious ailments from the coronavirus are “overwhelmingly weighted toward people with underlying [medical] conditions and the elderly.” Fauci is Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Relative Risk. So, if you’re not a senior citizen and you don’t have an underlying medical condition, then it is exceedingly unlikely that you will die or suffer a serious problem if you contract the coronavirus.

Yet, a far more dangerous and deadly public health problem, which affects many more Americans, young and old, gets relatively little media and political attention. I refer, of course, to obesity.

“Some 42.4 percent of U.S. adults,” reports the Washington Post’s Linda Searing,

now qualify as obese, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], with no real difference in prevalence between men and women…

Both obesity and severe obesity are most common among middle-aged adults (those ages 40 to 59), according to the CDC.

Data show that since the start of the 21st century, obesity has become increasingly common, rising from about 30 percent to more than 40 percent of adults, while the prevalence of severe obesity has increased from about 5 percent to just over 9 percent in that time…

Obesity also has been linked to an increased risk for numerous diseases and medical issues, including diabetes, heart disease and some cancers, as well as depression, asthma, obstructive sleep apnea, osteoarthritis and back pain.

Health experts say that losing just 5 to 10 percent of body weight can help obese people rein in their health risks.

Adds the New York Times’ Jane E. Brody:

A prestigious team of medical scientists has projected that by 2030, nearly one in two adults will be obese, and nearly one in four will be severely obese…

In as many as 29 states, the prevalence of obesity will exceed 50 percent, with no state having less than 35 percent of residents who are obese, they predicted…

Given the role obesity plays in fostering many chronic, disabling and often fatal diseases, these are dire predictions indeed. Yet… the powers that be in this country are doing very little to head off the potentially disastrous results of expanding obesity, obesity specialists say…

Americans weren’t always this fat; since 1990, the prevalence of obesity in this country has doubled.

People who choose to blame genetics are fooling no one but themselves… Our genetics haven’t changed in the last 30 years. Rather, what has changed is the environment in which our genes now function.

As we’ve observed here at ResCon1, the obesity epidemic is a national disgrace, and it is largely preventable.

Simply put, we Americans eat too much bad food too often, with little or no regard for necessary limits on our daily caloric intake and the need for proper proportions of macro nutrients—i.e., fat, protein, and carbohydrates.

The problem starts early in life, during childhood and adolescence, as some 18.5 percent of the youth population in America is obese, according to the CDC.

Public Policy. The politicians and the media could do more to focus attention on this problem and educate the public. There also are concrete public policy actions that could be taken.

For example, federal nutritional guidelines that recommend we consume an inordinate and unhealthy amounts of carbohydrates should be revised, and the demonization of fat needs to be reconsidered in light of the best and most recent scientific research.

This may be less alluring than obsessing over a new virus that has induced a public panic (or at least a media panic), but it would be far more effective and desirable from a public health perspective.

Feature photo credit: CDC via Stat News (map of obesity rates by state).

Schumer’s Sham Non-Apology Makes It Imperative That the Senate Censure Him

Schumer’s Sham Non-Apology Makes It Imperative That the Senate Censure Him

By John R Guardiano on March 9, 2020

As we reported Saturday, March 7, the failure and unwillingness of institutions—churches, schools, corporations, professional societies, et al.—to maintain standards of professional conduct, and to police and disciplined their own, is a big reason institutions increasingly have lost the public’s trust and confidence, and, with that, their ability to mold the American character and shape the nation’s destiny.

Yuval Levin makes this point brilliantly in a new and important book: A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream.

The Congress of the United States, unfortunately, is not immune from this problem. Witness the fact that Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) has threatened two Supreme Court justices.

For this reason, we have called upon the Senate to censure Schumer. This would be the right thing to do; and it would help to restore public trust and confidence in Congress as an institution.

Schumer’s apologists, however, say that censure is unnecessary because Schumer has apologized. In truth, though, the senator has issued a sham non-apology in which he doesn’t really own up to his condemnable offense; and this makes censure all the more imperative. Consider:

Abortion. First, after Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) rebuked Schumer, Schumer began his “apology” by castigating McConnell for a “glaring omission.” McConnell’s offense? He failed to mention that Schumer’s threats were issued within the context of a political rally motivated by an abortion rights case now pending before the Supreme Court.

But this is utterly irrelevant. Threats against Supreme Court justices do not become more legitimate or acceptable if they involve certain types of favored cases. Threats against Supreme Court justices are always and everywhere wrong. So-called context here is a diversion that Schumer is using to try and evade responsibility for his obviously egregious misconduct.

Louisiana Law. Second, Schumer falsely suggests that Court is on the verge of outlawing a so-called woman’s right to choose an abortion; and that this is accounts for his “anger” and “passion.” But this is hyperbolic nonsense.

In truth, what is at issue before the Court now is not the underlying right to abortion; but rather, whether doctors who perform abortions should be required to have hospital admitting privileges.

The state of Louisiana passed a law making this a requirement for doctors who perform abortion. The Court must decide whether this is an “undue burden” on the right to terminate a pregnancy. But even if the court found that the Louisiana law is Constitutional, abortion will remain a Constitutional right.

And what if the Court found that abortion is no longer a Constitutional right. Does that mean abortion will be ipso facto outlawed? No, as Sen. Schumer well knows.

Instead, it means that abortion policy will be decided by Congress, if it so chooses, and/or (more likely) the 50 state legislatures. Some states, such as California and New York will allow abortion at virtually any stage of a pregnancy, while other states, such as Louisiana and Alabama, will have more restrictive laws governing abortion.

In any case, the policy implications of the Court’s jurisprudence are again, utterly irrelevant. Threatening Supreme Court justices is plainly, simply, and obviously wrong. There are no exceptions to this rule because a senator feels strongly or passionately about a particular case or issue pending before the the Court.

Schumer’s huffing and puffing about abortion is a political diversion designed to try and legitimize his threats and thereby enable him to evade responsibility for his wrongdoing.

Political Diversion. Third, Schumer claimed that he wasn’t threatening violence, but instead was warning of the “political consequences” that would result were the Court to undermine abortion rights. Anyone suggesting otherwise is guilty of “a gross distortion,” he asserts. But as George Conway III observes in the Washington Post, “Schumer’s words

were unmistakably intimidating: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch.” “I want to tell you, Kavanaugh.” “You will pay the price.” “You won’t know what hit you if …” The emphasis is mine, but the meaning is clear: If you don’t do as we say, something bad will happen to you.

Those were threats, pure and simple. Although Schumer’s office was right that Schumer also spoke of a political backlash at the ballot box, that hardly leavens the threatening words Schumer directed toward Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

They have life tenure. Just as the Constitution’s drafters intended, elections can’t punish them. So what “price” would they “pay”? What exactly will “hit” them?

Moreover, while Schumer may have meant only that the Justices will suffer “political consequences,” some of his more deranged supporters may legitimately think otherwise, given the inherently threatening nature of his rhetoric.

Again, it was only three years ago that a Bernie Sanders supporter with a manifest hatred for Republicans nearly gunned down the entire House Republican leadership and some two dozen GOP congressmen. Schumer needs to be mindful of the effects his rhetoric might have on the lunatic left.

Chief Justice Roberts. Fourth, after the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, rightly rebuked Schumer for his threats, Schumer’s spokesman attacked Roberts for “remaining silent when President Trump attacked Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg.”

But even if Roberts had done what Schumer’s spokesman said he did—give Trump a pass—two wrongs don’t make a right.

As it turns out, though, Trump never threatened Justices Sotomayor or Ginsburg. Instead, Trump recently said that these two justices should recuse themselves in all “Trump matters” because of their alleged bias against him.

Trump’s remarks may have been, as Conway argues “dumb, baseless, and contemptuous of the rule of law; but they weren’t threatening.”

Indeed, since Trump could theoretically make a motion to recuse, and thus present the issue to the individual justices, it would have been inappropriate for Roberts to respond. And given how Trump didn’t and won’t back up his words with such a motion, his remarks didn’t deserve a response.

Beyond this, Roberts has spoken out against Trump’s demeaning of the judiciary.

In November 2018, after Trump criticized an “Obama judge” who had ruled against Trump’s administration, Roberts responded that there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges” but, instead, “an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

(Trump, of course, immediately hit back.)

But judges, let alone the chief justice, shouldn’t have to verbally spar with politicians. It undermines the judiciary for judges to have to do that, or even to consider whether they have to.

Schumer’s concerted attempt to rationalize his threats and evade responsibility for his misconduct make it all the more imperative that Congress intervene and formally censure him.

Again, this is about institutional honor and integrity, and restoring public trust and confidence in Congress as an institution. The time to act is now.

Feature photo credit: Reuters/Leah Millis via National Review.

The Senate Should Censure Senator Schumer for Threatening Two Supreme Court Justices

The Senate Should Censure Senator Schumer for Threatening Two Supreme Court Justices

By John R Guardiano on March 7, 2020

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has introduced a resolution calling on the Senate to censure Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) for threatening two Supreme Court Justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

The resolution has 14 Republican cosponsors, but won’t ever pass the Senate, even though the Republicans have a majority there.

The reason: too many Republican senators, such as Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), are opposed to the move because they fear it would ignite a tit for tat by Democrats, who then would demand that the Senate censure President Trump.

Graham’s concern is legitimate and understandable, but he’s wrong. Whatever the merits of the case for censuring Trump because of his misconduct vis-à-vis Ukraine, the stark reality is that what Sen. Schumer did is clearly and obviously wrong and deserves to be censured.

This isn’t a matter of partisan politics, or at least is should not be a matter of partisan politics. Instead, this is matter of institutional integrity and ensuring that standards of conduct and behavior are maintained and enforced.

For any institution, but Congress especially, this matters. Public trust and confidence can only be maintained if institutions police themselves and discipline their own.

Institutional Integrity. In fact, one big reason the public holds Congress in low regard is that, as Yuval Levin explains in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), it doesn’t see Congress maintaining or promoting an institutional ethic that shapes its members in a reliable and responsible way.

Levin has written a new and important book, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream. And while his aforementioned comment to NPR wasn’t directed at Congress or Schumer in particular, it nonetheless applies here.

How can the public trust Congress if the institution doesn’t stand for anything more than the will of the majority? And how can public confidence be maintained if standards of propriety, decency and respect are routinely flouted to secure rank partisan gain?

As Levin succinctly puts its: “We trust an institution when we think that it forms the people within it to be trustworthy.”

Rule of Law. Moreover, as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy points out, censure is necessary to bolster the rule of law.

Schumer, after all, issued his threats on the steps of the Supreme Court while playing to a mob trying that was trying to shape or influence a Court decision that should be immune or indifferent to political considerations.

What should guide the Court’s decision, exclusively, as McCarthy observes, is the rule of law and applying the law dispassionately, without fear, favor or prejudice, to the particular case at hand. Yet, Schumer used political intimidation tactics and threats explicitly to undermine the Court and the rule of law.

“That should rate censure,” McCarthy argues. “Case closed.” He’s right.

Censure, as the Senate explains on its website, is

less severe than expulsion [and] sometimes referred to as [a] condemnation or denouncement. [It] does not remove a senator from office.

It is a formal statement of disapproval, however, that can have a powerful psychological effect on a member and his/her relationships in the Senate.

In 1834, the Senate censured President Andrew Jackson – the first and only time the Senate censured a president. Since 1789 the Senate has censured nine of its members.

Censure. It is long past time for the Senate to censure its tenth member, Charles E. Schumer—not as a form of partisan warfare or political retribution, but rather as a statement of institutional honor and integrity.

No American, and certainly no member of the United States Senate, the world’s greatest deliberative body, should ever threaten a sitting justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Surely, all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, can agree that this is unacceptable and beyond the pale.

Let the Senate, then, demonstrate to all Americans and to the world that it expects and demands better. It expects and demands of itself and its members professional conduct, respect for the Constitutionally prescribed powers and authority of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, and civil discourse, dialogue and debate.

As it concerns Sen. Schumer, the way to demonstrate this commitment is through the power of the censure, which should rarely be used, but also not disused. Indeed, there are times when the censure is needed and necessary, and now is one of those times.

Feature photo credit: News Metropolis.

Schumer’s Attack on the Supreme Court Is the Democrats’ Latest Attempt to Intimidate and Politicize the Judiciary

Schumer’s Attack on the Supreme Court Is the Democrats’ Latest Attempt to Intimidate and Politicize the Judiciary

By John R Guardiano on March 6, 2020

Most independent observers, left and right, have rightly lambasted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) for literally threatening two Supreme Court justices if they do not rule in favor of abortion rights in a case now pending before the Court.

What no one seems to have noticed, though, is that Schumer’s threat is part and parcel of the Democratic Party’s dangerous and decades-long politicization of the judiciary, and its ongoing attempt to subvert the courts to serve blatantly political ends.

Most of the Democratic presidential candidates, for instance, supported a court-packing scheme to ensure that the Supreme Court rules in a “progressive” way which ensures politically correct or desirable results.

Pete Buttigieg, for example, proposed expanding the number of justices on the court from nine to 15 through a selection process ostensibly designed to depoliticize the Court, but which, in reality, is itself highly politicized.

Joe Biden, who will be the Democratic presidential nominee, says he’s opposed to a Court-packing scheme. Yet, he nonetheless pledges to subject his Court appointments to a political litmus test in which would-be justices must affirm their commitment to Roe-v.-Wade, abortion rights, and other left-wing, “progressive” political goals.

Politicization. This is, sadly, unsurprising. The attempt to politicize the courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, has reached a fever pitch on the left, with well-funded left-wing groups making this a high priority.

The left’s attack on the independence and integrity of the judiciary is also dangerous. This “is something we recognize as a banana-republic tactic when we see it in other countries,” writes National Review’s Dan McLaughlin. “Court-packing,” he notes,

is a Rubicon we should dread to cross. It last appeared on the national agenda in 1937, the high-water mark of one-party federal government at home and ideological authoritarianism around the globe.

Even then, it was roundly rejected by the American body politic. In one swoop, it would irreparably destroy the American tradition of judicial independence of the political branches.

In short order, this would end the American experiment of the rule of law and a government of separated and limited powers.

But Democrats and the left care little for what they clearly consider to be Constitutional niceties. What matters to them are results.

And, if they cannot achieve their desired political ends through the legislative branch of government, as the Constitution prescribes, then they will seek redress in the judiciary and the courts.

This has been happening for decades, as Democrats and the left have short-circuited the democratic process to achieve political results in the courts that they never could have achieved—or would have achieved more slowly and incrementally—in Congress and the state legislatures.

However, the left’s grip on the judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, is threatened now with the appointments of a new generation of originalist justices and judges who have a more modest and limited view of the judiciary’s role in American political life.

Indeed, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, famously put it in his 2005 Congressional confirmation hearing:

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role.

Democrats and the left, though, don’t view the Court’s role as limited; they view it as supreme, at least if it is pursuing a left-wing political agenda. Consequently, they are positively apoplectic that they are losing their grip on the judiciary.

That’s why they went to war over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, deploying mob intimidation tactics that we more often see in a banana-republic, not a mature and modern democracy.

Justice Kavanaugh, of course, and his colleague Justice Gorsuch, are the Court’s newest members; they were appointed by President Trump; and they have yet to fully rule on a host of matters, including but not limited to, abortion.

Sen. Schumer is not a stupid man. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and he boasts of achieving a perfect score on his SATs. He knew exactly what he was doing: He was laying down a marker for these new justices, and letting them know that they had better rule in politically correct fashion—or else.

Schumer has since apologized, but the damage to the rule of law and the integrity of our political and legal institutions already has been done. Democrats and the left have put the justices, and the judiciary more generally, on notice:

If you do not hew to the “progressive” political agenda, “you will pay the price,” as Schumer put it. “You won’t know what hit you,” and you will reap “the whirlwind.” This is frightening talk, made all the more dangerous because of the mob intimidation tactics sanctioned and encouraged by Democrats and the left.

And what makes these remarks all the more frightening is the spate of mass shootings in recent years by deranged individuals with political axes to grind.

It was only three years ago, after all, that a nut with a manifest hatred for Republicans almost wiped out the entire House Republican leadership and some two dozen GOP congressmen.

Unsurprising. Unfortunately, we should not be surprised by Schumer’s dangerous attempt to cow and intimidate the Supreme Court’s newest justices.

Democrats and the left have long made it their life’s political work to capture the judiciary and to use the courts for blatantly political purposes. And, to a disconcerting extent, they have been successful.

But with Trump’s appointment of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Court, that project is now threatened, and Democrats and the left are lashing out. Indeed, Schumer’s condemnable outburst wasn’t their first such attack and, sadly, it won’t be their last.

Feature photo credit: News Thud.

Super Tuesday and the Democratic Primary Map Show That It’s Over: Joe Biden Will Be the Nominee

Super Tuesday and the Democratic Primary Map Show That It’s Over: Joe Biden Will Be the Nominee

By John R Guardiano on March 5, 2020

We reported Tuesday morning, before Super Tuesday, that the Democratic presidential primary was “clearly a two-man race, even though Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg [were] still formally running.”

Well, today, after Super Tuesday, we can say with certainty that it is no longer a two-man race: because, for all practical intents and purposes, the race is over. Joe Biden will be the Democratic presidential nominee.

Why? Because Biden won big, prevailing in 10 of the 14 Super Tuesday states. And, in the four states that Biden lost, he nonetheless gained delegates by surpassing the requisite 15 percent threshold.

Consequently, in a result no one anticipated, Biden actually has more delegates now than Sanders: 566 to 501, according to Axios.

Future Primaries. Moreover, between now and March 17, there will be primaries in 10 states, where, for the most part, Biden has the clear advantage. These include delegate-rich Florida (248 delegates), Illinois (148 delegates), and Ohio (153 delegates), all of which vote March 17.

Biden has the advantage in these states because the demographics are clearly in his favor.

Indeed, the voters in Florida, Illinois, and Ohio tend to be older and more traditional Democrats, who strongly favor Biden. These states also have significant numbers of black voters, who, likewise, strongly favor Biden.

Thus NPR’s Juana Summers reports:

In Alabama and Virginia, Biden had the support of about 7 in 10 black voters. In Tennessee and North Carolina, Biden had the support of more than half of black voters.

Biden also outperformed Sanders with black voters in Texas, where they make up about one-fifth of the Democratic primary electorate. Exit polls show Biden had the support of roughly 60 percent of black voters in the state; Sanders had 17 percent.

Indy100’s Sirena Bergman, likewise, reports:

Exit polls show that more than half of voters aged under 45 voted for Sanders, compared to only 17 per cent of them backing Biden. By contrast, those over 45 were drastically more more than twice as likely to vote for Biden than Sanders.

Sanders’ last stand almost certainly will be in Michigan, which votes March 10. Sanders won the state in 2016 by just 1.5 percent over Hillary Clinton, but trails Biden in the latest poll by 6.5 percent. That poll was completed before Super Tuesday; yet, it still shows Biden surging.

As The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein explains:

If Biden wins next week in Michigan, one of Sanders’s most significant victories four years ago, the rationale for the senator’s candidacy could quickly become murky.

Sanders won’t win Michigan, but even if he does, so what? Where does he go from there? Nowhere; that’s where. As The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last observes:

Over the next two weeks, Biden will win overwhelming victories in Florida and Mississippi. He is likely to win in Ohio, Arizona, Illinois, and Missouri. A week after that, he will win a large victory in Georgia.

As things stand now, no one else has a path to a majority of the delegates, and Biden’s principal rival is a socialist who does not identify as a Democrat, is heading into difficult demographic terrain, and—most importantly—is fading, rather than surging.

Meanwhile, Biden remains the vice president to the most recent Democratic president, a two-termer who remains immensely popular both with the public at large and the Democratic base.

Last is right: Biden, to his credit, has been resilient. He won this race when too many clueless pundits wrote him off. On the other hand, we have to note—as we have noted before—that this was Sanders’ race to lose and lose it he did. How?

By making absolutely no attempt to appeal to anyone beyond his base of young, hardcore secular progressives. As the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney observes, this was a real problem for Sanders in South Carolina and other Southern states with large numbers of black voters, who tend to be more temperamentally conservative and religious.

If Sanders were a better politician, with more range and reach, he might have been able to pivot and find common ground with these more traditional people of faith. But the truth is that Sanders is a dour, dull and predictable socialist apparatchik who seldom smiles and rarely shows any wit, humor or humanity.

And so he lost.

Sanders Limited Appeal. That’s why we can say confidently that this primary race is over. Sanders cannot be someone or something that he is not. We’ve seen him now in two presidential campaigns, 2016 and 2020. Democratic primary voters have taken their measure of the man, and they’ve found him wanting.

“Sanders reached 33 percent or more of the vote in just five of the 14 states that voted, including his home state; beyond Vermont, he did not exceed 36 percent, his share in Colorado,” Brownstein notes.

Of course, there is a lot more to say and observe about Super Tuesday and what it means for the future of American politics. We’ll record those observations and explore those issues in future posts.

But certainly, the most significant development thus far is that Super Tuesday determined at last whom the Democrats will nominate as their standard-bearer against Trump, and that standard-bearer is 77-year-old Joe Biden.

Feature photo credit: CBS News via the BBC.